by Daniel Black
Jerry nodded affirmatively and walked back home with a peace few Black men ever know.
“Where you been, boy?” Jeremiah queried nervously upon Jerry’s return.
In solemnity, Jerry murmured, “I killed ’em.”
“You what?” Jeremiah cried.
“I killed ’em,” he repeated.
“Oh God.” Jeremiah wept bitterly. “You cain’t just shoot white men!” he hollered. “Is you crazy?”
Jerry had hoped his actions might impress his father, but instead Jeremiah’s pitiable response reignited Jerry ’s fury.
“What kinda men are we, Daddy? Huh?” he asked.
Jeremiah never answered. Miss Mary opened her Bible and read various Psalms aloud. Jerry hung his head and went to Billie Faye, who listened as her husband related proudly how God had finally begun to visit vengeance upon the evil of the world. Whether to cry or celebrate she did not know, but Jerry’s joy was untouchable. He had always dreamed of being a man, envisioning himself and his father self-reliant, self-determined, and self-empowered. And now the reality caused him to brim with light and enthusiasm.
“They’ll hang you sho, man,” Billie Faye whimpered, speaking for the first time since the assault. Her hand caressed Jerry’s narrow, slender, black face.
He closed his eyes at her touch and assured her everything would be fine. He had done what he was called to do.
The next day, more white men came.
“Where’s dat boy!” they screamed at Jeremiah with shotguns pointed at him from every direction.
“He ain’t home.”
“Then where is he?”
Jeremiah considered that any moment now could be his last, but surprisingly he was unafraid. Maybe his son’s strength had become contagious.
“I don’t know,” he said, smiling.
“We gon kill him when we find him!”
They left foaming at the mouth, swearing that Jerry’s blood would flow before the break of a new day. Yet, their thirst to mutilate Jerry Johnson would forever go unquenched because Jerry hanged himself in the middle of The Sacred Place. Jeremiah found him and called Miss Mary and Billie Faye to come. They took down his lean form and carried him home.
“We got to do somethin’ now, Daddy,” Billie Faye murmured through her pain. “Them mens is comin’ back.”
“Not for my boy theys ain’t,” Jeremiah said. He built an altar of fire in The Sacred Place and laid Jerry’s body upon it. Miss Mary sang as the ashes rose, “I’m so glad, trouble don’t last always.” Trees swayed at the sound of her voice, and Billie Faye stared on in silence. “Oh my Lawd, oh my Lawd, what shall I do?”
Billie Faye died eighteen months later. The image of Jerry’s lean body swinging from that tree never left her mind and robbed her of all living desires. Her weight dwindled to barely a hundred pounds. Nothing anyone said reached Billie Faye’s soul as she sat mummified in the living room rocking chair. When people, like the Reverend Cash, came to see about her, she never acknowledged them. Her mind was still in The Sacred Place, trying to make sense of a loss incomprehensible. Unable to do so, silence became her mantra, and the fighting spirit that Jerry loved so well tiptoed into oblivion. Sometimes, Miss Mary could get her to swallow chicken broth if she sang simultaneously. Tears would jump from Billie Faye’s eyes like water from a geyser, and Miss Mary would wipe them gently as she sang, “Trouble in my way, I have to cry sometimes.” She would stare at Miss Mary, trying desperately but failing miserably to articulate the pain and emptiness in her heart. Most days, she just shook her head violently, slinging tears from the edge of her face like one scatters grass seeds, never gaining clarity sufficient to reclaim herself.
On the evening of her demise, Miss Mary was reading the Bible to the grandchildren while Jeremiah cleaned his pipe. All hoped the Word of God might usher Billie Faye back to them. “I can do all things through Christ which strengthenth me,” Miss Mary began, and Billie Faye turned to face her. The children gasped at what they thought was a miracle of healing until Billie Faye burbled, “Why didn’t Christ come?” Then she wilted into the rocker as though part of its structure, and Sarah Jane wailed for a mother who had relinquished the last bit of fight in her. Sarah Jane decided that day never to love a Black man the way her mother had loved her father, for the price of love was more than she was ever willing to pay. So, after the funeral, she assumed a stoic, stainless-steel posture that she hoped would protect her from hurt and trauma for the rest of her living days.
The youngest of Jeremiah and Mary’s children was also a boy whom they named Enoch. All he did as a child, Miss Mary complained lovingly, was laugh. Everything was funny to him, and he had a gift for transforming despair into joy. At birth, Enoch only weighed three pounds although he was carried full term. The midwife examined him and said, “I can’t find nothin’ wrong with this baby, Miss Mary. It’s the funniest thing, but he’s ’bout the healthiest baby I’ve ever seen. He’s just so little!” Jeremiah laid rags in a little wooden box, and that’s where Enoch slept “nearbout ’til he walked,” Miss Mary said with a chuckle. The strangest thing about Enoch was that Miss Mary never knew she was pregnant until her water broke Easter Sunday morning. She was in the choir singing, “Down at the cross, where my Savior died! Down where from cleansing from sin I cried! There to my heart was the blood applied! Glory to His name!” when she felt the gush flow between her legs, and she kept crying, “Glory to His name!” as she stumbled to the floor. Jeremiah ran to her side.
“What’s de matta, honey?” he asked desperately.
“I’m havin’ a baby,” she whispered. “Get me outta hyeah!”
Jeremiah wrapped her right arm around his shoulders and escorted her back home. He kept asking, “How you pregnant?”
“De same way everybody else get pregnant, man!” she screamed between contractions.
“But you don’t look pregnant! Yo belly ain’t even stuck out! Have you been missin’ yo time?”
“No, I ain’t!” she screamed again although she shared his confusion.
By the time the midwife arrived, Miss Mary was up cooking supper. The contractions had only lasted twenty minutes or so, and then the baby slid out like a wet beaver. He had a grin on his face almost as wide as the face itself, and Jeremiah told his wife, “We gon call him Enoch ’cause he look like he jes seed de Lawd.” Miss Mary agreed, but couldn’t help worrying about him because of his inordinately small size. The midwife assured her, “I’ve never heard a healthier heartbeat, Miss Mary. I wouldn’t worry. He grips my finger like an eight-month-old.” Jeremiah laid him in the box, and he slept all night like a grown man.
He ate like one, too. By six months, Miss Mary had to wean him because he had sucked her breasts dry. At five, he ate more than anyone in the family and complained incessantly about being hungry. Miss Mary swore the child had worms. In addition to unripe apples, peaches, persimmons, and blackberries, he ate fruit peelings, red clay, and green tomatoes in the spring. Like a wild boar, Enoch uprooted peanuts and potatoes in autumn, often building a small fire and roasting them himself. He was never found without a pocket full of pecans or hickory nuts, which only held him over to suppertime. Everywhere he went he expelled a trail of gas so lethal others cursed him. “You must be full o’ dead muskrats, boy!” his father often said. Yet the child’s jovial nature caused others to forgive his improprieties and, in fact, to revel in his company. In public, people subconsciously gravitated toward him until they found themselves engulfed in his humor. His mother crowned him the “clown of the century.”
“Hey, folks!” was his standard, exuberant greeting. His boisterous voice and abundant energy compelled even the diffident to speak. Most loved him and prophesied that he’d be a preacher one day. A few characterized him as obnoxious and flamboyant, but the rest dismissed these comments as evidence of jealousy.
By age ten, Enoch was the community comedian.
“There was a Black man in heaven,” he began at the dinner table one evening
. Possum started laughing hysterically. She dropped her fork onto the floor, but when she reached to retrieve it, her limp arm simply vibrated with the rest of her body. Her inability to maintain composure always fueled Enoch’s performances. Jerry shook his head silently, but loved Enoch’s humor no less. Jeremiah and Miss Mary suppressed their laughter long enough to make sure the tale contained no vulgarities.
Enoch cackled at Possum’s dismantled form, causing her to laugh even harder. “This Black man had done walked ’round heaven all day long and got tired, so he axed de Lawd fu some lemonade, and de Lawd said ‘Sho!’ and gave him a glass o’ de sweetest lemonade he had done ever tasted.”
Jeremiah, who was giggling now, warned playfully, “Okay, boy. You playin’ wit de Lawd.”
“No, he ain’t, Daddy,” Possum intervened to make sure Enoch was allowed to finish the yarn.
“So de Black man finished de lemonade and listened to de heavenly choir sing ’til he got tired o’ dat, too. He walked through de flower garden and smelled de roses and honeysuckles and smiled at all de folks he knowed. But then he got tired o’ grinnin’, too.”
“What he do then?” Possum instigated, unable to still her jerking shoulders.
“He axed de Lawd if he could visit hell.”
Possum fell out of her chair. Until now, Miss Mary had remained silent, enjoying her son’s confidence while simultaneously monitoring his play with blasphemy, but this last line was more than she could bear. “You outta order, boy! You don’t use dem kinda words in my house!” Her large eyes gazed at Enoch in absolute reprimand.
“I ain’t said nothin’ bad, Momma! I was jes talkin’ ’bout de place where de devil live.”
“Finish de story, boy,” Jeremiah said, smiling, overriding his wife’s objection.
Miss Mary mumbled, “Dat’s what’s wrong wit him now. Every time I try to chastise de boy you go in behind me and …”
Enoch glanced at Miss Mary to make sure she wasn’t too angry, and continued: “Well, anyway, de Lawd frowned and axed de man why in de world he’d want to visit hell, and de man said he jes wanted to see what it was like. So de Lawd let him go.”
“You a fool, boy,” Jerry cackled gently.
Again, Enoch checked to make sure his mother wasn’t fuming, and she bellowed, “You may as well tell it now!” in order to hear the rest of the story.
“When he got to hell, he met a lotta his old friends and saw dat people was partyin’ and drinkin’ up a storm. Dey had jook joints like Fish’s place down in de bottom and blues music was playin’ real loud. Well, de Lawd had done tole de man dat he couldn’t stay in hell long, and de man asked jes how much time he had. So de Lawd tole him dat he had to be back by sundown.”
Jerry was laughing now, and Miss Mary shook her head in feigned disgust.
“He went to de jook joint and startin’ drinkin’ and partyin’ real bad and found a girlfriend and they started—”
“All right, clown! You gettin’ too mannish!” Miss Mary forewarned.
“Yes, ma’am,” Enoch offered respectfully but continued: “De man wuz dancin’ and havin’ such a good time dat he fugot ’bout being back in heaven by sundown. In fact, when he went outside, de sun was risin’ in de east like it do every day.”
Possum had never recovered, and every word Enoch spoke worsened her condition.
“Well, when de man got back to heaven, he ’pologized real sincere to de Lawd, but de Lawd told him dat he couldn’t let him back in. De man said, ‘Oh no, Lawd, I ain’t ’pologizin’ ’bout missin’ yo curfew’”—Enoch mocked a drunk man’s raspy voice—“‘I’m ’pologizin’ fu troublin’ you. I jes came back to get de rest o’ my things!’”
For the first time in Johnson family history, Jerry hollered until his sides ached. Enoch’s head collapsed onto the table, and tears ran from Possum’s eyes faster than she could wipe them away.
“You fixin’ to git a whoopin’, boy!” Miss Mary jumped up and exclaimed. “You don’t make no mockery o’ heaven in my house! And dat joke ain’t funny!”
She grabbed Enoch by the collar, dragged him out behind the outhouse, and whooped him senseless. Possum was still on the floor crying when they returned, so Enoch concluded he must have a gift. His stories always left Possum dismantled, and, after a while, he started walking to the outhouse on his own as he shouted the punch line over his shoulder.
“You don’t get tired o’ Momma beatin’ you?” Jerry asked him one day.
“She don’t really be mad,” Enoch explained lovingly. “Dat’s jes what she suppose to do. Sometime she be laughin’ as she be beatin’ me.”
Jerry smiled and thought about how much he loved Enoch. He envied Enoch’s ability to speak his mind regardless of what others thought. Jerry wanted that boldness, but instead his was a character too sensitive to weather other people’s insults. That’s really why he loved Enoch’s stories—because his brother told them without fear of the cost.
The funniest one, Jeremiah told his grandkids, was the joke about where preachers bank. Walking onto the front porch after church one Sunday, Enoch began, “There was a preacher one day who didn’t have no money.”
“All right, boy! We jes came from church. Ain’t you got no reverence fu de Lawd’s day?” Miss Mary protested.
“Yes, ma’am, I do,” Enoch said, “but this one ain’t bad, Momma. I promise.” Miss Mary continued into the house to prepare Sunday dinner. Jeremiah and the children remained on the porch.
“What happened to de preacher, boy?” Jeremiah whispered, and sat in the old rocker.
“Well, he couldn’t figure out why he never had any money, so he approached one of the ladies of the church and asked her how she saved her money.”
Like always, Possum’s laughter poured from her belly the moment Enoch began the story. She had heard this one before, but that never mattered. It was Enoch’s drama she loved.
“De church lady told de preacher dat she keep all her money in her bosom—paper and change. She was a big woman wit real big … you know.” Enoch cupped his hands in front of his chest to approximate the size of the woman’s breasts. “De preacher said, ‘I’ma man, so that ain’t gon work fu me.’ De church lady didn’t know what to say. Then all o’ sudden de preacher clapped his hands and said, ‘I got de answer! ’ De church lady said, ‘What is it?’ and de preacher said, ‘Can I open an account in yo bank?’”
As Enoch began to stumble in laughter, he felt Miss Mary’s right palm sink into the left side of his face. “Momma!” he yelped, surprised to learn that she had been listening the whole time.
“Boy, I’ll kill you dead if you eva say some mess like dat again! Do you hear me?”
“But, Momma, it wunnit nasty!” Enoch tried to explain through misty eyes.
“It wuz nasty, fool! You ain’t got no business talkin’ ’bout dat kinda stuff. You’s a child!”
Enoch wanted to protest further, but Jerry’s shaking head convinced him to let it go.
After that day, Enoch still told stories, but he learned which ones to tell to which folks. That was how he met and married Ella Mae Pearson. She was standing in the crowd in front of Fish’s place one night as Enoch carried on something terrible. After the laughter subsided and the crowd thinned a bit, she told Enoch, “You a crazy fool, man.”
He smiled broadly at this red-bone, skinny girl whom he had eyed several times in the past. She was light, but her kinky hair confirmed her blackness, standing on top of her head in coiled belligerence. Its thickness allowed no light to penetrate, and Enoch chuckled that even a torrential downpour never found its way to her scalp. Although she was thin, Ella Mae boasted the perfectly rounded, rotund behind that was Enoch’s only requirement in a woman’s form.
“Hey there,” he shouted.
“You oughta be shame o’ yo’self”—she smiled sheepishly—“tellin’ lies like dat.”
“I ain’t told a lie since I been born.” He winked.
That conversation evolved into a uni
on two years later. They moved to Memphis, where Enoch cleaned bathrooms at the Peabody Hotel during the day and did stand-up comedy in Black-owned clubs at night, although never making ends meet. When Jerry died, Enoch and Ella Mae decided to return to Money where, if nothing else, they could always eat. Things weren’t as bad as the couple expected they would be. They had two boys, Ray Ray and Chop, and decided simply to live without the daughter they had hoped Chop would be. Their aim had been to build their own house on their own land, but Jeremiah’s sharecropping debt consumed every dime they made. So the couple settled into the dilapidated shack with Jeremiah and Miss Mary and resolved to make the best with what they had.
Two
THE GRANDCHILDREN SAT DOWN TO LUNCH UNUSUALLY quiet. Miss Mary knew something was wrong, and she knew they had lied. Before pressing the matter, however, she studied their faces, looking for clues as to what could possibly have rendered them so inexplicably mute. Her stares were certainly disturbing, yet the children worked hard to remain quiet. Knowing Miss Mary wasn’t one to relinquish her suspicions quickly, they knew it was only a matter of time before one of them surrendered.
“So ain’t nobody talkin’, huh?” Miss Mary set the sandwich bread and the peanut butter on the table. “I see,” she mumbled threateningly.
Sarah Jane opened her mouth to explain the matter, but then bit her bottom lip in an attempt to hold her peace. She knew if she spoke, she’d cry, and her grandmother would understand instantly the gravity of the matter, for that day was the first time Sarah Jane had cried since Billie Faye’s Homegoing. The thought of unleashing her emotions like that again made her ill and motivated her to deceive her grandmother as long as she could.
“Ray Ray? You ain’t got nothin’ to say?” Miss Mary entreated.
“No, ma’am,” he returned abruptly. “Ain’t nothin’ to say. Everything’s fine, Grandma. Really.” Sarah Jane kicked him under the table, a sign that he should simply be quiet. Ray Ray’s anxiety was much too apparent, and his rambling only made Miss Mary more incredulous.